Krishnacharitra

In book form it was published in 1886 and revised in 1892. First
published as a serial in the Prachar magazine starting in
the Ashwin issue of BY1291 along with two other highly acclaimed
articles, Anushilan and Dharmatatva, in Nabojivan.
The latter two covered the theoretical constructs behind the hindu religion
and philosopy and Krishnachritra was to serve as application
or living proof of the thesis. The author wanted to publish these three
works simultaneously as books. However, Krishnacharitra came out earlier
and the other two works were combined and first published in book
form a couple of years later (1888).

In Krishnachritra the author traced the historical proof of Lord
Krisna's earthly existence. His deductive scientific inquiry dispelled
superstitions with reason, mythology with history and
dogmas with logical principles. Krishnacharitra, in which the
author traces available classical literature to establish the
historical existence, or otherwise, of the Shri Krishna persona,
shall remain as the best testimony and timeless monument to his
immense intellectual and methodological ability to disect fact from
fiction, history from legend, truth from imagination, fire from smoke
and man from God. A task any lesser writer would find extremely
difficult as he or she would have to negotiate a fine divide between
popular beliefs and dearth of concrete evidence either for or against
such mythology on the one hand and the logical impossibility of a man
being God. Tagore said that in Krishnachaitra, Shrikrishna is
not the lead character - the free-thinker, that resides in the human
mind, is. It is that free-thinking mind the author has glorified for ever.

Acknowledgement:

Much of the materials for this article was sourced from the Bankim Rachanabali (Complete Works of Bankim Chandra), Tuli-Kalam, Calcutta 1986